


stake

by light



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-20
Updated: 2012-07-20
Packaged: 2017-11-10 08:14:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/464137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/light/pseuds/light
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If they're both pretending to be betas, who will make the first move?</p>
            </blockquote>





	stake

**Author's Note:**

> With the following prompt in mind: "Alphas are in the minority, like 1 alpha for every 15 omegas, which is why they hold such power. Also, they are required to find a mate to produce offspring with and contribute to a sperm bank every couple of years. Sherlock is an alpha that has never once been interested in "doing his duty" so to speak. John is an Omega that's never really managed to catch any alpha's interest before. Right from the start they click, to the point where Sherlock is changing his habits just a tiny bit to suit John and John always comes when Sherlock calls. Finally, after a year or two of John taking off for a week every three months to deal with his heat Sherlock is like "enough of this beating around the bush." and him and John have an adult discussion about the fact that the both of them would very much like to spend John's next heat together, as well as things like whether they will try for a baby this time or use birth control. They then get everything ready for the heat and go about having sex. and Mycroft can (FINALLY) take his brother off the watch list that the government has for rogue alphas." Unedited

John figures it out the day that he moves in.

He sets his shampoo and soap down in the corner across from Sherlock’s on the bathtub and walks out of the bathroom. Sherlock doesn’t look up from the newspaper he’s reading in the living room when he says, “Is this going to be a problem?”

“Uh,” John says with his hand on the handle of his suitcase.

“It wouldn’t even take a trained monkey to draw a conclusion from my toiletries,” Sherlock says. He flips to the next page as he repeats, “Is this going to be a problem?”

“Isn’t it technically illegal?” John asks.

Sherlock actually flips the top of the newspaper down and looks at John. “Are you going to report me?”

“No,” John says without thinking.

Sherlock narrows his eyes. “I do loathe repeating myself.”

“No,” John decides, because he’s already shot a man for Sherlock, “This isn’t going to be a problem.”

~

One month later, just as they’re coming back from a crime scene, Sherlock closes the door of their flat after them and says, “John, take a shower. No soap. I need you to question an omega witness.”

John doesn’t even have time to take his coat off. “Now hang on—”

“Don’t sound so surprised, John,” Sherlock says, eyes on his phone, “Of course I know what synthesized beta smells like.”

“No, what?—no I’m not surprised,” John says, “I’m just a little miffed that you want me to reveal myself for the sake of your case. You can’t do it yourself?”

Sherlock actually looks up at him and there’s a stretch of a pause before he says, “No.”

“Really, Sherlock—“

“I’m sure I’d traumatize the witness somehow,” Sherlock says. He seems distracted as he eyes John. “Nobody seems to appreciate my interrogation techniques. You really think I’d be able to question this witness?”

John doesn’t know what Sherlock’s trying to get at. Praise? Validation? A denial?

“I’ll go take that shower now,” John says. He’s probably just imagining the way that Sherlock’s eyes follow him down the hall.

~

John’s never really considered it before, even though he’s pretending to be a beta: settling down with another omega. He would have probably preferred a beta—and while he was at it, someone female—but then Sherlock Holmes methodically trampled over every hypothetical future he had set up in his mind.

~

But here’s the thing: John doesn’t _really_ figure it out until four months after he looked at that bottle of odor neutralizing body wash and the beta body spray. He doesn’t figure it out until he wakes up with his head swimming and the realization that he had forgotten his charting thanks to the two all-nighters he had pulled with Sherlock in the drizzling rain of early morning. The smugglers had eventually shown up and Sherlock had gleefully apprehended them without waiting for backup, which meant that John got to use his gun three times more than he should have. Two all-nighters leading up to the arrival of his heat and John is barely coherent enough to realize that there’s someone knocking on his door.

It takes an effort but John eventually gets to his feet. His shirt feels like sandpaper against his fevered skin so he pulls it over his head and stumbles against the wall as he does so. The knocking ceases as he muffles a curse. But there’s nothing pressed against the heated skin of his chest, nothing scraping against his oversensitive nipples, nothing except the cool relief of air. Every step he takes, he can feel the lubricant sliding between the cheeks of his arse.

“Sorry,” John says as he opens the door, leaning on the handle, “Look I should have told you but I didn’t—”

Alpha. The scent of alpha. John’s only scented it while in the military and never in civilian life, but he’s absolutely certain.

Sherlock stares at him, his nostrils flaring. John’s eyes go from Sherlock’s face to the bulge in his trousers and John _wants_.

“You,” He breathes.

Sherlock turns before John can reach for him, and then he’s gone.

~

_You’re an alpha? I thought you were an omega._

_You always see but never observe. –SH_

_Why didn’t you tell me?_

_Is this going to be a problem? –SH_

~

Two days after the end of John’s heat, Sherlock walks in and throws his coat on the couch. John looks up from where he’d been typing his blog post.

“You’re still here,” Sherlock observes.

John lifts his hands from the keyboard, palms up.

“I’m not interested in breeding,” Sherlock spits out the last word.

“Okay,” John says, “I didn’t think you would be.”

“If you’re expecting something,” Sherlock starts, and then stops. He frowns.

“Sherlock,” John rises to his feet, “No expectations. I have no interest in being some eighth wife. We can just—” John gestures expansively, “—go back to being betas.”

Sherlock stills and looks at John for a long moment before he turns toward the kitchen and says, “Good,” without looking back.

~

They can’t, really.

He’s presented himself as a beta for so long that he doesn’t know how to act any other way, but the primal part of his brain knows that he’s an omega.

And it’s that part of him that climbs through his consciousness and gives him thoughts about what it would be like to have Sherlock’s bare body stretched out against his. It keeps his eyes lingering a moment too long on the expanse of pale throat, that seeps into his dreams and magnifies that momentary scent of alpha until John has nothing but the distorted scrap of a memory left over.

And John knows that he’s not imagining the way that Sherlock looks at his neck like he’s considering something. He’s not imagining the way that Shelock’s palm slides along the small of John’s back whenever they have to work with a new team of investigators, the way he’s marking John as _his_ without even meaning to. It’s not normal beta behavior but Sherlock’s hardly been normal.

It’s not the life they agreed to.

So John packs his duffel bag every four months and pretends he doesn’t notice the way that Sherlock’s eyes darken when he says he’ll be back after his heat.

~

John’s given up hope that Sherlock will find the courage to follow him.

No, that’s not true. That’s selfish. Sherlock is one of the bravest men he’s met.

John’s given up hope that Sherlock will change his mind.

Also selfish. But John thinks that maybe this fixation will go away with time.

~

As a child, he had read fairy tales of waifish omegas overcoming trials to find their alphas and no matter how many trolls they fought or how far they had traveled, they always submitted to the alpha in the end.

Network television had found a billion dollar industry in filming the competition of twenty-some omegas for the attention of an alpha. They found a billion dollar industry in filming the all-too-common falsely-dramatic lives of omega housewives who all bonded with one alpha.

No matter if John received the top marks in his class or carried his rugby team to victory—in the end, his teachers and superiors would sit him down with a smile and say, “I hope you find an alpha who is good to you.” Like he couldn’t possibly be a successful person unless an alpha saw his worth.

So in the end, John chose the path of least resistance.

~

Sometimes when they’re on a stakeout for far too long into the early hours of morning, Sherlock drops his coat around John’s shoulders without a word. John protests but Sherlock ignores him in favor of staring fixedly at where he’s expecting the perpetrators to show up, seemingly perfectly fine in his suit jacket. Eventually John stops shivering.

And John hates to admit that he likes it, because when he presses his nose into the fabric of the collar, he can catch the faint traces of sweat and alpha.

~

John shoves a change of clothes and his laptop into his bag and fumbles in the bottommost drawer of his dresser for his toys. He had called a service at first but after realizing that the omega part of him wouldn’t be satisfied with anything other than the cock of the alpha who lived with him—he had given up dragging other people into his messes and stuck with the toys.

He zips up the bag and goes down the stairs. Sherlock sits in his chair and doesn’t look up as John enters.

“I’m heading out,” John says, “Be back in a few. I’ll have my phone on me. Text if anything comes up.”

Sherlock presses steepled fingers to his lips and doesn’t reply.

“Okay,” John says, and heads towards the door.

“Don’t go,” Sherlock says.

John pauses and he swears his heart skips a beat. He half turns, “Uh.”

“Don’t,” Sherlock repeats, getting to his feet, “Go.”

Silence. Sherlock advances on him with singular determination.

“Why?” John asks. 

Sherlock’s crosses into his personal space and looks down at him. When he speaks, his breath brushes past the side of John’s cheek, “You know why.”

John laughs once, a little disbelieving, but the bag slips from his fingers and drops the few inches to the ground.

“I would like to stake my claim,” Sherlock says, his hands hovering over John’s shoulders like he’s not sure he’s been given permission to touch yet, “Say yes, John.”

John looks at Sherlock—the way that he’s biting the inside of his lip, the way that his eyes keep moving all over John’s face but never quite looks him in the eye. He’s nervous, John realizes.

“Okay,” John says.

~

The truth is: Sherlock has been staking his claim for the last two years. He’s just never realized it.

~

John could get lost in the scent of Sherlock in these pillows, all over these sheets. But instead he lays on his side in the dark and listens to Sherlock breathe. One day he will be familiar enough with the rhythm of Sherlock’s breathing that he’ll be able to recognize the exact moment when Sherlock falls asleep.

Sherlock hadn’t wanted to be bound to anybody, in any way. He wanted to be recognized for the brilliance of his mind alone—not because he carried uncommon genetics.

 _The work always came first,_ Sherlock had whispered into the dark, _Until I met you._

~

John wakes to the familiar heat-haze clouding his mind, and a thick cock thrusting slowly into the space between his thighs. The top of it nudges between the cheeks of his arse every time Sherlock pulls back, smears the lubricant against the bottom of his balls, a mix of John’s wetness and Sherlock’s pre-come. John shifts his hips, squeezing his legs together and Sherlock stops to breathe a choked moan against the back of John’s neck.

“You could aim a little higher,” John says and wakes more fully. The scent of alpha surrounds him and John swears it’s the best thing he’s ever drawn into his lungs because it’s _Sherlock_. It rouses the omega in him, until John is fully aware of just how much he needs Sherlock to push into him, how wonderfully that gorgeous cock would fill him, how empty he feels now.

John grinds against Sherlock, pressing against the other man to maximize the amount of bare skin they have in contact. The sheets—even if they smell like Sherlock—are too rough against his skin and he swears that Sherlock’s skin is like silk, magnetized and soothing everywhere he’s touching the alpha. Sherlock presses an open-mouthed kiss against the top of his shoulder and sucks at the skin to leave a bruise, his curls brushing against John’s neck.

“Please,” John begs, reaching a hand back and managing to grasp Sherlock’s cock only for a moment before Sherlock’s fingers circle his wrist and pulls it away. John groans as Sherlock presses fingertips into his hips, hard, and bites at the back of his neck, nose against John’s hairline.

“You have no idea how fantastic you smell,” Sherlock murmurs.

John’s lost all sense of coherency and oh god, yes, Sherlock was parting his arse, seeking out the hole that was dribbling out all of his arousal, spiking the air with the heavy pungency of his heat and urgency. Sherlock brushes against it with the pad of his thumb and John near jerks against Sherlock before Sherlock is slipping in the entire finger, exploring. John tries to keep himself from writhing but he can’t help the trembling of his legs, from the effort he’s making to keep still.

Sherlock’s finger slips out of him and John turns his head to see Sherlock slip the finger into his mouth. Jesus.

“Sherlock,” John says, his breath stuttering and god it’s a miracle he can even form the word. He’s lost the ability to conjure any others—but it’s fine because Sherlock finally— _finally_ —pushes the blunt his of his cock between John’s arsecheeks and sinks all the way into John with one sinuous slide.

John gasps and pushes back on Sherlock, his muscles fluttering against the intrusion and the pain of accommodating Sherlock’s huge cock melts away into the ecstasy of finally being filled. Sherlock starts to move and the pleasure sparks behind John’s eyes, has him panting and moving against Sherlock in a hormone-driven craze of want and need. The bed slams repeatedly into the wall and Sherlock’s fingers spread against John’s hips and stomach, keeping him in place as Sherlock drives into him. The intensity of the pleasure coiling at the base of his spine overwhelms him, again and again—his come mixing with the lubricant that drips between his thighs every time Sherlock pulls out with an obscenely wet sound.

He feels it first as an increase in pressure and pushes back against Sherlock and holds himself there as it inflates. Sherlock releases him to stroke his sides and then he can’t pull out again—they’re joined together by the knot. John can feel the hot spurts of Sherlock’s seed inside him, filling him up.

Sherlock bites lightly against John’s shoulder and grazes his lips against his neck.

~

They both still pretend to be betas. Nothing changes.

Except everything does. Because when Sherlock is pressed up against him in the dark, John is slowly learning to accept the omega part of himself.


End file.
